Review: Tyshawn Sorey Trio’s ‘Mesmerism’

Did any artist have a better 2021 than Tyshawn Sorey? The 2017 MacArthur Fellow was the subject of a New York Times Magazine profile, premiered recordings of two large ensemble compositions, and received acclaim for albums with saxophonist Hafez Modirzadeh, DJ/producer King Britt. Not to mention his role in the powerful trio with pianist Vijay Iyer and bassist Linda May Han Oh. Sorey seemed to be everywhere doing everything, always defying expectations. So, it might be tempting to call Mesmerism (Yeros7 Music, 2022) a retreat into the conventional by Sorey’s Standards Trio. It’s not.

True, Sorey, pianist Aaron Diehl, and bassist Matt Brewer take on two familiar standards here. “Detour Ahead” and “Autumn Leaves,” account for nearly half of Mesmerism’s 48-minute running time. Yet this trio doesn’t so much play over song form as play with it. On the former, each player circles the song structure in his own orbit, coming together to mark the changes and the pulse only to venture far from the harmony and rhythm again. Entrusted with the melody, Diehl fractures it and rearranges the pieces over the bar lines, pulling and stretching phrases like a modern Errol Garner.

You would think that after more than a thousand recordings and countless dreary jam-session calls, there would be nothing left to find in “Autumn Leaves.”  Some wrinkles in the arrangement aside, this trio doesn’t try. Instead, they opt to play it straight with an effortless swing over Brewer’s walking and Sorey’s airborne cymbal beat.

The remaining four covers are far less familiar, but even here, the trio applies intuition and deep listening to unearth fresh surprises.

“Enchantment” is a deep cut from Horace Silver’s Six Pieces of Silver (Blue Note, 1957), the kind of vaguely Latin exotica that Martin Denny might have covered. Surprisingly few jazz musicians have attempted it. Sorey remakes the tune by exchanging Silver’s bright clavé for a powerful groove at the place where boom-bap and shuffle meet.

“From Time To Time” exists almost out of time, doubling down on Paul Motian’s spooky, otherworldly compositional signature. The melody as played on Motian in Tokyo (JMT, 1991) is barely perceptible, coming into focus only near the song’s end when it emerges from a haze of shimmering piano arpeggios, a distant object in an otherwise empty sky.

Muhal Richard Abrams’ “Two Over One” was first recorded by saxophonist Chico Freeman with Elvin Jones and bassist Juini Booth and that rhythm section’s approach is easy to hear in Sorey’s tidal beat and Brewer’s intervallic leaps. But, here, the tempo is turned down to a simmer, and the blues feeling is more pronounced.

Sorey saves his most radical gesture for the concluding cut. The title of Duke Ellington’s “REM Blues” suggests that it was written on the morning of the Money Jungle (United Artists, 1963) session with Max Roach and Charles Mingus but left unreleased until Blue Note’s 1986 LP reissue. It’s a get-down shuffle, as skeletal as “C-Jam” Blues, and Sorey’s trio swings it madly. There’s nothing fancy here, just laying deep in a groove. That’s an audacious conceptual flex and just what you would expect from music’s renaissance man of the moment.

Mesmerism is now available on Yeros7 Music. It can be purchased on Bandcamp.

Tracklist: 1. Enchantment; 2. Detour Ahead; 3. Autumn Leaves; 4. From Time to Time; 5. Two Over One; 6. REM Blues.

Personnel: Tyshawn Sorey (drum set), Aaron Diehl (piano), Matt Brewer (bass).